{"id":615,"date":"2010-02-25T19:09:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T19:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/?p=615"},"modified":"2010-05-03T15:47:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-03T14:47:33","slug":"stromness-liberty-cannon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/2010\/02\/stromness-liberty-cannon\/","title":{"rendered":"Stromness &#8216;Liberty&#8217; Cannon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rusting at the edge of the sheltered harbour of Stromness is a cannon said to be a relic of the <a title=\"Anglo-american War\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/War_of_1812\" target=\"_blank\">Anglo-American War<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Trade routes and access to the vast grain fields of Canada became the trigger for war and the shipping lanes between Canada and Britain came under constant threat from the US Navy.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_618\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-618\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-618\" title=\"The cannon is said to be from 'The Liberty'\" src=\"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"The cannon is said to be from 'The Liberty'\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal1-203x152.jpg 203w, https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-618\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cannon is said to be from the &#39;Liberty&#39;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Canada was a British colony at this time.<\/p>\n<p>It is thought that the cannon came from a privateer, an armed ship often funded by individuals or companies, called the Liberty.<\/p>\n<p>How the cannon came to be in Stromness is a mystery, \u00a0but it was put to good use to signal the arrival, often from Canada, of <a title=\"Hudson Bay Company\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hbc.com\/en\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company<\/a> ships in to the harbour.<\/p>\n<p>During 1813, with Captain Scott in charge, \u00a0the Liberty <a title=\"Bringing authentic information and images together to help you discover places in Scotland\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk\/search_item\/index.php?service=RCAHMS&amp;id=218242\" target=\"_blank\">ran aground<\/a> at the entrance to <a title=\"Cambeltown\" href=\"http:\/\/www.campbeltown.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Cambeltown<\/a> harbour. Some reports indicate that she may have been salvaged.<\/p>\n<p>On a wall nearby is a blue plaque that reads \u00a0&#8216;The cannon reputed to have been salvaged from the American Privateer &#8216;Liberty&#8217; in 1813.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_620\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-620\" style=\"width: 203px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-620\" title=\"Plaque explains the history of the cannon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/canon_gal3-203x152.jpg\" alt=\"Plaque explains the history of the cannon\" width=\"203\" height=\"152\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-620\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plaque explains the history of the cannon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It was used to fire a salute to the Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company Ships&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More information<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Little seems to be published on the internet about the &#8216;Liberty&#8217;, Captain Scott or how the cannon came to be recovered from the ship and brought to Stromness.<\/p>\n<p>If you can help please get in touch via the contact us form and we can update this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rusting at the edge of the sheltered harbour of Stromness is a cannon said to be a relic of the Anglo-American War. Trade routes and access to the vast grain fields of Canada became the trigger for war and the shipping lanes between Canada and Britain came under constant threat from the US Navy. Canada [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,9,726],"tags":[1140,1139,1151,1159,1145,1137,1154,1150,347,1142,1146,1156,1158,1141,1143,1138,1153,1155,1157,1148,19,1147,1149],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-featured","category-history","category-military","tag-american-war","tag-anglo-american","tag-blue-plaque","tag-cambeltown","tag-canada","tag-cannon","tag-canon","tag-captain-scott","tag-caption","tag-company-ships","tag-grain-fields","tag-hudson-bay-company","tag-liberty","tag-mystery","tag-privateer","tag-relic","tag-salute","tag-scott","tag-ship","tag-shipping-lanes","tag-stromness","tag-trade-routes","tag-us-navy","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/author\/admin\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":869,"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spirit-of-orkney.com\/contents1a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}